1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to communications between logic cores within an integrated circuit and more particularly to an improved system and method that uses local routers and global routers to substantially reduce the number of wires within the integrated circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer systems have traditionally included a system unit or housing that contains electrical components making up the computer system. A computer system typically includes a motherboard that is configured to hold the microprocessor and memory, and one or more busses that allow the components to communicate. The motherboard typically comprises a plurality of computer chips or electrical components, including intelligent peripheral devices, bus controllers, processors, bus bridges, etc.
More recently, computer systems are evolving toward an integration of functions into a handful of computer chips and to devices that have an entire system (logic, storage, etc.) on a chip (system-on-a-chip (SOC)). This coincides with the ability of chip makers to place an increasingly larger number of logic blocks on a single chip. Thus, computer systems are evolving toward devices with only a handful of computer chips, where each computer chip performs many functions. The integration of a plurality of modules or functions on a single computer chip requires systems that have improved data transfer within the chip architecture. Due to the shorter distances and tighter integration of components on a chip, new data transfer architectures are necessary to take advantage of this environment.
Further, in large application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) with hundreds of cores, it is difficult to communicate effectively between cores due to the distance of the relative core locations, as well as wiring congestion. The more cores that are placed within a single ASIC, the greater the wiring problems and, thus, communication problems. Therefore, an improved system and method is needed that provides efficient data transfer between the logic modules within an integrated circuit chip.